


The Oldest Law

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: LooNEY_DAC's SSSS Post-Canon Thingies [3]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Partially jossed, sigh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 11:53:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8749726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC





	1. An Unexpected Reunion

Year 95, Early Spring

Emil walked down the gangplank to the quay, his duffel slung over one shoulder. It was raining, of course, as no other weather would suit the almost comically gothic air of the island. He could just make out a glimmer in the distance, which should be the main house, already lit up against the storm’s dark.

The quay was long, rickety, and utterly devoid of other human figures, which was irksome, as carrying his kit all the way to the seemingly quite distant house did not appeal, though at least he wouldn’t need to climb the Björköfjärden stairs. When he reached the quay’s shoreward end, however, Emil found an odd conveyance awaiting him, bearing a card with his name on it. It was, in fact, an Old Time “shopping cart”, still in working order and spacious enough to hold his bag, though already partially filled with (presumably) the things his employer had promised to provide.

It took quite some time to reach the main house, as it was even more distant than Emil had feared (and the rain wasn’t helping any), but, at long last, he reached the entryway, an ornate and impressively carved affair. He went through the outer door, shut it, opened the inner door, and looked around.

The entry hall was as ornately carved as the entryway outside had been. There were several doors and a staircase, and it was a while before Emil realized that the door nearest him had the word “Coat-closet” inscribed upon it. He shrugged off his sodden outer garments and hung them by a number of others, in very familiar designs and sizes.

_”EMIL!!!!!”_

Emil barely had time to brace himself before Tuuri had flung herself at him in her puppy-like joy at seeing him again. Just as at their first meeting, she was chattering away a mile a minute. “...and you’ll love the big--ooooooh!” Tuuri stopped and clapped her hands over her mouth. “I forgot I’m not supposed to tell yet! Don’t mind my little slip there; just--be ready for a cool surprise!”

“I need to stow my things,” Emil half-apologized, drawing away from Tuuri. “You say the others are all here, in the common room?”

“Yep. It’s just through there.” She gestured at the ornately carved doorway. “You’ll find a room labelled with your name upstairs.” Tuuri quivered in her glee as he went to the stairs. “See you in the common room!”

Emil found his room easily enough, and was not displeased with the accommodations. Bed, desk, and wardrobe were all neat and tidy, and the adjoining washroom was clean as a whistle. All in all, his quarters quite suited his fastidious nature.

A strange scraping noise from outside caught Emil’s attention. The room had a narrow window with a heavy safety shield that would be proof against most grossling threats, though Emil fervently hoped its use was an unnecessary precaution. There was nothing out there but rain that he could see, but the noise had set his reflexes a-tingling.

On the desk was a note with his name on it in unfamiliar handwriting when Emil turned his head back. It certainly hadn’t been there earlier, and the sender/deliverer had left no clue as to their identity. Picking up the folded paper with a frown, Emil wondered why someone would go to such lengths to give him a note anonymously.

Once he unfolded and read it, he knew why.

They were chattering away in the common room when Emil entered, aside from Lalli, of course, who sat there looking like he wanted to slip outside rather than endure the Babel any longer. But everyone looked up at Emil’s entrance. He took the note from his pocket and looked at it again...


	2. Penny, Penny, Mikkel’s Dime

Emil frowned grimly, still looking at the note he held. With a sudden angry convulsion, he crushed it and announced, “We’ve been _had,_ my fellows.”

Every eye was upon him in the sudden silence following his words, so he continued, brandishing the note, “This note says Tuuri is keeping something from us, which, of course, she is; but it implies that she has a nefarious motive of her own for doing so, and that her secret may prove lethal to one or more of us.” Emil snorted. “I’d as soon believe that... I don’t know. Pigs flying in formation across the North Sea to destroy the Icelandic herds of sheep wouldn’t be nearly so unbelievable as that. What this note truly tells me,” he paused significantly, “is that whoever wrote it wants to sow discord and distrust amongst us. This means that we were all brought here under false pretenses, as part of some kind of twisted game.”

Mikkel looked grave; Sigrun smirked skeptically; Tuuri simply gaped; and Reynir and Lalli looked clueless, as they still didn’t speak the Swedish which Emil had employed so eloquently. “Tuuri, please translate.”

As she did, Lalli’s face scrunched up in thought, and he pulled a note from his pocket and handed it to Tuuri. Her eyes widened as she read it, and then she said, “It’s in Finnish--” as though they couldn’t have _guessed_ that “--and it says Mikkel has ‘his own plans’ for me and Reynir, like he’s some kind of mad Mengele type!” She repeated it in Icelandic for Reynir.

“What utter nonsense!” These were not Sigrun’s _exact_ words, but they convey the sentiment she most forcefully expressed. This second note seemed to have cured her skepticism, at least momentarily.

Reynir looked stricken. “Does this mean there’s no Master Mage here to help instruct me?”

“No, my boy,” Mikkel answered, as Tuuri was still looking poleaxed. “Nor are there any Rash researchers desirous of discussing the case notes from the initial outbreak we found on our journeys.” He turned to Emil, switching to slow and simple Danish. “Why do you think they called us here?”

“To hunt,” Sigrun answered for Emil. “They want to pick us off one by one, with their little ‘love notes’ making us tear ourselves to pieces first. And why us? Well, we’re the heroes who braved the Silent World and lived, so obviously we’re the most best.”

“Exactly,” Mikkel concurred. “Made all the easier by telling each of us some ‘secret’ as part of why we’re here, which we shouldn’t tell anyone else. For example, I was to meet the researchers in their secret Rash Experiment Center on the island, which I expect is as gruesome as the works of Mengele Tuuri alluded to, and which all non-immunes should keep well away from. Thus, when I knew Tuuri and Reynir were here, I began to make plans to keep them well away from any such place, hopefully without exposing the cause. If Emil hadn’t taken his stance of trusting all of us--if the six of us weren’t ready to put our lives in each others’ hands--this kind of thing would have festered in our hearts like the Rash.”

“But what should we do?” Emil asked in frustration. “Should we try to fly away now, or should we await further developments?”

“A good question, Emil,” Mikkel rumbled. “Sigrun, what do you think?”

A million different emotions flew across Sigrun’s face as she thought her answer through...


	3. Six Little Wanderers

The little Swede had the bad habit of being right when he should have been wrong; it tended to throw Sigrun off her game. Now, the others were all looking to her to work something out of this mess.

“First, no one is alone, _ever.”_ Oh, good. Her brain had worked something out. She’d wait and listen to what it had to say, and only step in if it got _too_ crazy. “They want us apart; we should stick together. Next, we need to tear this place apart--” she looked at Emil “--metaphorically for now, Fire-bug; we still need the walls up tonight--but everything else gets moved, examined, probed and tested so it won’t give us any surprises.”

Sigrun paused to assess their reactions. It had to be particularly long for the translating to get done, but once they were all up to speed, she could see the agreement on her crew’s faces, so she concluded, “We’ll start in here so we can make it our base camp. After we check everything, we’ll need to set it up so we can sack out in here. Oh, and reserve supplies: we’ll need to gather a cache in here.”

She looked around the room again. “This will be our redoubt until we get out of here; but we _will_ get out of here, even if we have to build a boat ourselves. Well, let’s get to it.”

*

The room was large, running directly below the six bedrooms as it did, so checking and rechecking every nook and cranny took a considerable amount of time. Once they had completed this monumental task, however, Mikkel took Tuuri into the kitchen and the two returned in short order with enough dishes of various types to make for a small but genuine smorgasbord.

Exercise had, naturally, restored their appetites, and so all six set in with a will. As they ate, Sigrun laid out more plans and rules, culminating with, “When we’re done here, we’ll go up and strip the rooms of anything usable. We may even be able to cobble a makeshift raft together with, like, the bed-frames or something. We’ll see when we’ve got it all lumped in here.”

*

Sigrun and Tuuri were clearing out Tuuri’s room, Sigrun grabbing stuff from the wardrobe as Tuuri gathered everything from her desk, Tuuri chattering all the while, as was her wont.

“I’m really glad we’re all in this together, you know, Sigrun? I mean, I wouldn’t feel nearly as safe if you or Mikkel or Emil, or even Reynir weren’t here. It’s like, as long as we’re together, nothing can touch us, isn’t it, Sigrun? Sigrun?”

Tuuri turned to the wardrobe. It was totally empty. “S-s-s-sigrun?” she whispered. Then, as was their prearranged signal, she screamed.

In less than a heartbeat, Lalli was there, followed closely by Emil, Reynir, and Mikkel.

“Sigrun’s gone,” Tuuri nearly wept.

Mikkel looked grim. “Stand back,” he ordered, ripping one of the bedposts away as though it were balsa wood and brandishing it like a club. Without another word, he beat at the back of the wardrobe until it splintered to reveal the wall behind it. Then Mikkel tried the sides, without luck.

*

Down in the bowels of the island, a whisper sounded, unheard by any of those above.

_“...And then there were five.”_


	4. Hot and Cold Running Thrills

It had been a very rough night. None of the five had slept much, even Lalli, but none had spoken much, either. They were all concerned about Tuuri, as she’d been like a sleepwalker since they came back to the common room; and they’d all felt the urge to stay in physical contact with the others. Eventually, they’d wound up in a weird mound of bodies, blankets and pillows, half supine, half upright, but all together.

It was actually some time before any of them noticed the subtle but horrifying change that had come over the room sometime during the night: the doors were gone. Where the doors had been were blank spaces of wall no different than those behind any of the bits of furniture they hadn’t already shifted.

This was very nearly the last straw for Tuuri. It was so serious that Lalli came over to her as she hyperventilated, wrapped her in his skinny arms, and murmured to her as though they were children again, slowly rocking her back and forth.

Reynir frowned. He was a generally sunny and positive person, but this--this _mindwarping_ stuff, and what it was doing to Tuuri, were getting him positively _angry_. There are many reasons not to anger a mage, even a half-trained mage of the Icelandic school, and Reynir was about to demonstrate one.

Glowing blue fingers traced out a circle on the carpet, a circle that lingered. “Mikkel, get everyone in the ring,” Reynir ordered. When that was done, he drew another circle all around the first ring, and then started scribing individual runes in the interval. The last rune glowing in its place, Reynir made a tugging motion, and the rune circle began to spin.

Tremors began to shake the room as the runes spun on, and when they finally came to rest, a wave of blue energy burst from the ring, washing across every corner of their prison, and a section of the wall fell open.

*

It seemed the silly Icelander had finally managed to get angry. Lalli distinctly approved, as he had long since passed mere anger himself. Not waiting for the others--he was still their scout, after all--he left the ring and moved into the hallway Reynir’s magic had exposed.

It only took a moment for Emil to follow. Even knowing it was futile, he slowly and carefully spoke Sigrun’s paramount admonition to his Finn friend. “No... one... is... alone... Lalli.”

Lalli paused then, as though he’d actually understood Emil. Then he shrugged and moved on again, but this time he gestured for Emil to follow. The Cleanser and the Mage walked down the hall together.

*

Mikkel was also starting to get angry, and the walk down the corridor did nothing to diminish that. Along the sides were paintings that changed when you looked at them from different angles, and statues set behind cleverly curved glass so that their faces seemed to follow your progress down the corridor. Childish stuff all, the kind usually reserved for carnivals and funhouses, but for someone in Tuuri’s delicate state, someone that the responsible party or parties had _deliberately_ worked up into such a delicate state, it could prove disastrous.

Emil and Lalli awaited them after they rounded one more corner. “The floor up ahead,” Emil said breathlessly, “it moves. We didn’t want to be carried off without you.”

All together then, the five stepped onto the conveyor.

*

“Sigrun!” With that cry of joy, Tuuri broke from their knot and flew toward the doorway and the beckoning form of their absent leader. As she passed between the lintels, a sickly green glow pulsed out from them, snaring her like a bug on flypaper. Tuuri screamed in agony as the flux washed over her, over and over and over again.

This last was finally more than Lalli could stand. Snarling, he leapt in front of the others, thrusting his hands forward in a very specific way. _Do this only as your last resort,_ Onni had once warned him, _for you risk your all with this blow._ Lalli didn’t care, though, not with Tuuri hanging there in torment. A blindingly bright stream of blue energy shot from his hands, winding this way and that through the interval until it finally hit the doorway.

Emil was the first back on his feet. “Lalli!” he yelped, moving to his friend’s prone form. Lalli was still breathing, but only just, and his eyes were rolled back in his head so that only the whites showed. After a second, Reynir went past where Emil cradled Lalli to where Tuuri lay groaning.

Neither was fit for anything more, meaning Emil and Reynir were the only ones who could go forth from here...


	5. Interstitial Terrors

This was all most irksome.

Usually by this point the subjects were actively trying to kill one another, but this group just _had_ to be different. Despite losing their leader, their weak link _and_ their chief mage, they were still determined to outthink their opponent.

It was almost enough to drive one mad, were one not mad already.

Of course, this next bit should be amusing, since the two boys didn’t share a language. Perhaps some fun could be had from that.

*

It only took a few moments for Mikkel to realize their folly in splitting up, even now. His patients were more-or-less unhurt, aside from severe shock. That was bad enough, but physically, at least, there was no apparent reason they couldn’t be moved, or rather carried, if he did so carefully.

The two Hotakainens together weighed less than Mikkel was quite comfortable with. Wondering yet again what the Finns ate that they stayed so light, he carefully slung one over each shoulder and followed the boys.

They hadn’t actually gone that far. They’d stopped at a blind corner and were taking turns looking around it when he quietly rumbled a greeting. Interestingly enough, neither jumped. Emil looked at him suspiciously, but Reynir allayed his fears with a simple, very Lalli-esque gesture. “Look,” both said at once in their respective languages, pointing around the corner.

Mikkel looked, struggling to keep as much of himself under concealment as possible. A vast, richly colored and colonnaded space opened before him, filled with row after row of oddly robed people all chanting. The columns were covered in what looked to Mikkel like authentic hieroglyphics. Flames rose from braziers in the intervals along both sides. The floor was much lower, allowing him to see the far end of the room, where a huge and hideous idol stood above a raised dais where the high priest stood, his head covered with a tall mask that gave him the head of a jackal. And always, the chanting continued.

Mikkel retreated several steps, thoroughly bewildered. Where could all those people have come from? Then, Reynir said something, and Emil asked Mikkel what he’d said, bringing the big Dane back from his ruminations.

For the next few minutes, Mikkel passed messages back and forth between the boys, though he often had to repeat himself for Emil, who actually apologized at one point for being out of practice at hearing Danish. Mostly, though, the three of them discussed what awaited them around the corner.

Finally, Emil, frustrated beyond bearing, preemptively rolled a grenade into the room. Mikkel and Reynir just had time to cover their ears before it blew.

It was all very strange. The explosion seemed to shatter a great deal of glass, and the chanting certainly stopped, but there were no screams or cries of any kind; there was only silence.

Eventually, the three each looked back around the corner--only to find an empty stretch of corridor not unlike the one they were in, only the floor was littered with shattered glass. No trace remained of the fantastic sight they’d beheld earlier.

*

From the shadows, far out of sight or hearing of either tormentor or tormented, another voice rose, whispering in the dark, “Ah, Emil, what a very _Cleanser-like_ \--” this last twisted with hatred “--solution you found.”

A muffled sound caught the voice’s attention. “Yes, my dear. We shall be joining them soon enough.”


	6. Ain’t It Just Grand?

“Come to me, my dears,” a feminine voice cooed through the darkness.

*

_Mikkel carried the unresponsive Tuuri and Lalli down the winding hallway, his concern growing as the minutes passed and they stayed unresponsive._

Tuuri and Lalli were conversing with the Swan of Tuonela. Mostly, it spoke of its home and how wonderful it was and how they should come with it “for a nice little visit”. The Swan waxed quite eloquent on the matter, especially the visiting part.

Lalli and Tuuri glanced at each other dubiously. The Swan _sounded_ so reasonable, but something in the backs of their minds was telling them that something was off about this. About that time, Lalli noticed a dark figure in the shadows.

The Swan put forth its most persuasive spiel yet, and the two Finns could feel their hearts turning to Tuonela.

“NO!”

The dark figure interposed itself between them and the Swan, and they finally saw that it was Onni. “I am here to bring them back to the Living World.”

The Swan tried talking first, using the same patter that was almost working on Lalli and Tuuri, but Onni stubbornly stood there and repeated what he’d said earlier. Each time he did, Tuuri and Lalli drew closer to him.

“I am _losing my **patience**_ with you, human,” the Swan growled, twisting and swelling into a hideous form out of nightmare. “So run along now and let me lead these two into their new home.”

Fear and despair showed plainly on Onni’s face, and for a moment, his mouth worked without a sound. Then, he said, quaveringly, “No.”

_**”NO?!?!?!?”** _

The heavens trembled with the Swan’s roar, but Onni shook his head and repeated, more firmly now, “No. If you want them, you will have to get through me.”

The Swan wasted no further words, stabbing down with its horridly toothy beak furiously. His body ablaze with otherworldly energy, Onni ducked, dodged and blocked each blow, until the Swan kicked him with one wickedly clawed foot, knocking the human prone.

Onni remembered his parents, his grandparents, his village, his friends, and at the thought of Tuuri and Lalli joining their number while he watched helplessly, a Grief unlike any he’d ever known came over him, strengthening him instead of weakening, empowering him even as the Swan pinned him underfoot.

The Swan, perhaps sensing something was amiss, looked down at Onni, but its apprehension was too late. Without apparent effort, Onni pushed the Swan’s foot off of him, so hard that the Swan fell over. Even before the Swan was finished falling, Onni had stood and moved to where its head would land.

The Swan of Tuonela was a god, immortal, implacable, and inevitable, but now, it faced what it had never faced before. Gathered now in Onni was the whole and sum of all the Grief Humankind had ever felt, from the ancient pain of Lemmenkainen’s Mother to the raw agony of the newly bereft. So when the Swan flailed at the puny human form confronting it, the pain of Rash and pestilence across the ages knocked its vicious blows aside like so many feather-tickles. And when Onni struck back at it at last, the rage and loss of all those who had had to watch their loved ones die was in his blow, and even a god such as the Swan could not stand against that.

“All right, _fine,”_ the Swan snarled, beating as hasty a retreat as it could manage, _“take_ them. But I tell you, human, I shan’t be put off forever.”

“Shut up and leave, Swan,” a new voice said sharply. “Or do you need another beating to keep you quiet?” As the disgruntled Swan left, Puppy-Fox stepped into the light. “Hi, mortals! Oh, don’t look at me like that, Onni. I’m just here to give Lalli a memory, and a two-word message for Emil.”

*

Sigrun looked askance at her erstwhile rescuer. “You haven’t told me practically anything: who you are; why this is happening; why you snatched me from the others; where we are; where we’re going; or what your plans are!”

“All in good time, O Loquacious Sigrun,” the man said from deeper in the shadows. “All is not quite ready for us to reveal ourselves just yet.”

“But why split me from my team?”

“Again, the answers will become obvious in due course. As for my name, you can call me... Eric.”


	7. Descent to Tension’s Rise

The grosslings had shown her the truth, all those years ago. She had been born to kill, the greatest death-dealing machine ever envisioned, but her nature had lain dormant for her first five years of life. Then, at last, she had been unleashed, finally free to share her greatest gift with the world.

The fate of all life was death, and those that held sway over life were the dealers of death. Before the grosslings had slaughtered her village, and she, in turn, had almost casually slaughtered them in return, this truth had not been clear to her.

To deal out death was the ultimate power to which one could aspire, and she had embraced her death-dealing wholeheartedly. More recently, though, she had found it amusing to deal out that death more indirectly, as pushing those around her into killing each other was preposterously simple. Of course, sometimes, the more _hands-on_ approach proved necessary.

It appeared that such would be the case fairly soon, as her current guests drew ever nearer to the center of her web. Not that she was worried: the two boys and the man would present her as little difficulty in that regard as the two unconscious Finns. No, the only semi-problematic one had been the first one taken out. The only real question was whether she’d even break a sweat in sending them to their destiny.

She thought not.

*

“I see you earned some good scars,” Sigrun said casually as they worked their way down a long and winding stairway. “I’ll bet there’s a really good story behind ‘em.”

“Not really.” The response was very very faintly amused. “Accident and incident brought them about, and no such great and heroic deeds as you imagine have ever been mine to do.”

“Even so,” she persisted, “you might find them for the taking, were you to go to the right place.” No romantic inclinations led her to speak thus, but the need for fighting men (and women) in Dalsnes. Last year’s Hunting season had been the worst in living memory, and the signs all pointed to worse to come.

“There is no right place for me, for I must eschew the company of others. Too long with them, and either I wish them dead or they wish me dead, or both, and so I abide on my own.”

Sigrun added this to the meager store of things ‘Eric’ had let slip and lapsed into silent contemplation.

*

Reynir had been studying hard since he got back to Iceland, and now seemed as good a time as any to see if that study had borne fruit at all. Mikkel had called a halt in a widening of the corridor, then gently placing the Finns in a position where he could examine them again. Reynir thought he could do something to help here, and told Mikkel so.

The doubtful tone of Mikkel’s assent would have discouraged anyone except Reynir, whose bubbly nature was reasserting itself despite his anger. Humming to himself, he rummaged in his little haversack until he found the special body pens. After carefully selecting _just_ the right shade for each of them, he just as carefully drew a very specific galdrastafur on Tuuri’s forehead and a similar but just slightly different one on Lalli’s forehead.

Once the rite was complete, Reynir sat back and waited...


	8. Or 5c, or maybe 9-1/2

“I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

The voice came from the far end of the corridor, from a small, dignified-looking silver-haired woman. She was obviously in what Reynir’s mother would call “her golden years”, but certainly lean and fit, and Reynir could sense something off about her, like a set of notes jarringly off-key in a musical piece.

Mikkel had barely begun to turn towards her when she somersaulted down the corridor, crashing into him with enough force to knock him down and out. The suddenness of it caught Reynir by surprise, but Emil was already moving with the instant reactions needed of one who fights grosslings. She’d barely gained her feet when she had to duck the improvised club he’d made for himself, and then dodge his knife.

She looked at Emil a bit--just a tiny bit--more respectfully. “Well, Cleanser, you have some spunk in you,” she congratulated him as she dodged his next set of blows without apparent effort.

Then someone behind her bashed her over the head with another improvised club, and she fell to the floor.

*

Tuuri was being pecked at by vultures who spoke with human voices, but when she tried to bat their beaks away, her hands were grabbed by human hands. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, and the first face she saw was Sigrun’s, looking at her with some concern.

Tuuri’s eyes widened and her face paled dramatically, but, good Finn survivor that she was, she held in the screams building in her, lest she bring the grosslings down upon them. Then Sigrun spoke, in calm and soothing tones, letting the frightened Tuuri know that yes, it was really Sigrun this time, and that everything was going to be fine, and the fear began to subside.

*

Eventually, after Mikkel had been roused and Tuuri calmed, Sigrun got around to the more social niceties, like introducing the man accompanying her, who had mostly remained quietly in the background. Emil thought there was something vaguely familiar about him, but this ‘Eric’ had a generic enough ‘Norse’-ness about him that Emil dismissed the sense of familiarity thus.

_“Eric.”_ The single word was filled with venom.

Everyone turned to look at the previously barely conscious Lalli, who was now full on glaring at the figure Sigrun had called ‘Eric’. Lalli shifted his gaze to Emil for a moment and said, grinding each syllable out slowly, “Eric... Smed... Ivor... Vit.”

Emil frowned. “Wait. Why do those names sound so familiar?”

Lalli said something else, in Swedish no less, and the words he spoke were ones Emil had never expected to hear from him in any tongue. “Troll-bait.”

A sudden surge of memories washed over Emil: a horrible murder; the intense investigation; the secret tribunal; and finally the public summation and corporate flogging. He recoiled, as one does from an unexpected pile of filth. _“Murderer! **Traitor!**_ What dark force saved you from your just fate?”

Sigrun looked confused. “What are you babbling about, Emil?”

Emil determinedly tamped the growing rage down so that he could speak coherently. “That lower-than-troll-gunk over there used to be a Cleanser, until he raped, tortured, mutilated and killed one of our own, a girl no older than I! For that, he was to be staked out as troll-bait, but he survived somehow, and I mean to rectify that!”

‘Eric’ calmly said, “No, you won’t.”


	9. Red ‘Eric’ and His Fate

“No, you won’t.”

‘Eric’ smiled nastily at Emil, his eyes bright with an insanity eerily reminiscent of the dead woman’s. “It takes more than you all have combined to kill me: the Cleansers staked me out, half-dead from the beating already, so that a giant could feast on me, and I survived it! They knew I was alive after it was long dead, but still they left me there, and so they all deserved to die! That’s why I’ve been killing them off, one by one, here on this island. Why else do you think I egged our dear girl into bringing you here, Emil, if not to get my revenge on you?”

Emil was so tremendously angry that he had trouble speaking for a moment. “All those good Cleansers you slew are dead only because you hunted them down as a Vätte would; are you man enough to face this Cleanser as he stands ready to fight you, or have you lived like a troll for so long that you’ve become one, a coward crouching in the dark until its prey has turned away from it?”

*

‘Eric’ lay dead on the floor, his face twisted into an expression of disbelief. From the center of his chest sprouted Emil’s knife, surrounded by a slowly spreading stain of scarlet.

Emil was sweaty and shivering, and had obviously lost his breakfast over in one corner, but he bore not a cut nor a scrape nor even a bruise from the fight. The look on his face spoke of scars within, though, so Lalli simply went over to his messy Swede friend and gave him a shoulder bump.

*

There was much to be said in favor of razing the path behind you: it forced you to forge ahead; it denied your enemies their former playgrounds, the chance to strike at you from behind, or the ability to backtrack you to your home; it heartened your friends and demoralized your enemies; and many other things. All told, Sigrun was confident that letting Emil burn this place to the ground would fall in the positive column, rather than the negative.

“I was _going_ to let you go as thanks for ridding me of ‘Eric’, but I can’t countenance the burning of my home, so you have to die.”

Razing the path behind you was also a good way to draw your enemies out of cover, whether you intended to or not. The crazy woman had seemed to go down a bit too easily for Sigrun to be comfortable about it, but she hadn’t wanted to risk checking to see if the nut was playing possum until now.

Emil had heard tales handed down from his forebears about things from the Old Times called “action movies” starring demigods like Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jet Li, Wesley Snipes, and many others that featured fights that moved so fiercely and swiftly as to be beyond human capabilities. The fight he now witnessed would have put any of them to shame, he was quite certain. He and Lalli were standing well back and watching carefully, just in case, though Emil doubted his own ability to succeed if Sigrun failed.

Sigrun’s shall we say _capability_ at fighting had obviously surprised the crazy old woman; whether that surprise and Sigrun’s advantages of youth and stamina would be decisive remained to be seen, as the two seemed quite evenly matched otherwise. Each woman was obviously fully versed in how their bodies could best be used to strike or to evade a blow, and each woman was as quick as the other to take advantage of any perceived slip of their opponent’s. Consequently, the fight swiftly transformed into a fast paced and energetic dance of sorts.

Flesh and blood can only keep going for so long, and eventually, the crazy old woman’s endurance gave out enough for her to be fatally slow to dodge one of Sigrun’s blows, and from there, the vicious cycle of more pain/less speed/more hits taken/more pain etc brought the fight to an inevitable end. Trembling with near-exhaustion herself, Sigrun stood proudly over the corpse of her vanquished foe.

*

After they dealt with the crazy old woman, everything just seemed to fall into place. They found their way back to the surface fairly easily; a boat was waiting for them at the quay; and no other surprises jumped out at them on their way to Björköfjärden.

Once at Björköfjärden, they each went their separate ways again: with goodbyes effusive and taciturn, long and short; with promises of correspondence and visits; with laughter, tears and sad smiles; and with a few particularly poignant echoes of their first encounters, now distant enough to seem a lifetime ago.

Emil, Tuuri and Lalli were the last to depart. Trying to keep a manful composure, Emil stuck out his hand to Lalli, only to be surprised when his Finn friend nearly knocked him over in a Tuuri-esque hug, Tuuri joining them after a moment.

Then the boarding call for the ship to Finland sounded, and the Hotakainens hurried away. Emil sighed sadly and began the long walk to his train. Duty called.


End file.
